A Word About Flying Caterpillars

MANY words both wise and foolish are written and spoken nowadays concerning the moral regeneration which results from artistic environment. We hear that in certain tenements the dear old traditional chromos of ecstatic saints, gorgeous in coats of many colors, have been supplanted by shadowy reproductions of Mona Lisa’s disconcerting smile, that the crude theatrical poster has been ruthlessly torn down by the helpful hand of the Social Uplifter, and in its place has been substituted the modern equivalent of a God Bless our Home motto, — I refer to the inevitable little group of Mr. Sargent’s prophets, who have strayed beyond the walls of the Boston Public Library, and in small detachments have invaded every American home, be it ever so humble.

The crusade for reform in art has also assailed the temple of literature. A zealot for social regeneration has given us to understand, that after she had really got to work uplifting the slums, converted scrubwomen began to quote Ruskin as glibly as if he were the latest cheap comedian, while Dante and Pater were household, not to say tenement, words.

Well, what of it ? Personally I think there is but one more painful example of the triumph of art over nature than a trained seal ringing a dinner-bell or pushing a perambulator; and that is the sad spectacle of a self-respecting and selfsupporting washerwoman who has been taught to admire Botticelli and to quote George Meredith. In each ease we may marvel at the patience and skill of the trainer, but are we anything but shocked at the result ? There are plenty of things we can learn from the seal, there are still more things that we can learn from the poor scrubwoman, — lessons in endurance, true neighborliness, and kindheartedness. There are also, of course, innumerable things she can learn from us, things which wall be more helpful and more pleasurable to her than a mere bowing acquaintance with the great masters. Firing off pistols will not be a valuable accomplishment to a seal when he returns to his native element.

I suppose these heretical doctrines will be set down as the vaporings of a reactionary, or perhaps the smug sentiments of a pharisaical citizen who is trying to discourage the Privileged from uplifting the Downtrodden. It is certainly not my intention to try to curb the progressive spirit of this age of altruism. I merely wish — in all humility — to utter a word of protest against arrogant and ignorant idealists who are trying to teach insincerity and affectation to the few really sincere and ingenuous souls left unpolluted by modern over-civilization.

I do not mean to approve of Mrs. Stetson’s conservative butterfly, who so much preferred to remain a worm that he madly tried to climb back into his chrysalis, but I think that when we introduce Mr. Walter Pater to Mrs. O’Toole, we are tying artificial wings to a caterpillar and expecting him to float about like a butterfly. His efforts to soar are pitiful. If the wings develop from the inside he will fly naturally, and when that moment comes, I promise to be behind no one in admiring his spontaneous flight. But most of us belong to that large family of worms who will never turn into butterflies, and if we can learn to crawl a little less lumberingly ourselves we shall be setting a better example to our still slower friends than if we try to teach them to use flying -muchines.

Will no one, then, take my worm’s-eye view of life and join my Creeper’s Crusade? Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he will come with me to a “converted tenement,” throw Mrs. Browning out of the window and reinstate the Duchess, request Hosea and Jeremiah to move on, and in spite of their lamentations enthrone a lurid caricature from a Sunday Supplement ?

Nothing is beautiful unless it is sincere and appropriate. One’s surroundings should express one’s individuality and one’s personal predilections. The modern drawing-room, which represents merely the taste of the architect and interior decorator, is faultily faultless and splendidly null unless there is in it some personal touch or suggestion of those who are to live within its walls. This human note is often out of harmony with the general scheme. Sometimes a clumsy black-walnut desk or a stuffy old armchair is the inartistic medium through which the tender grace of a day that is dead alone survives. Never mind, —it is that touch of nature which gives life to the dead perfection of the decorator’s art, - it is that discordant note for which the inward ear listens.

Just so, to me at least, is the effect produced by a tenement-house room in which the bare necessities of life can be brightened by only the scantiest æsthetic touches, and in which these touches have been supplied by an alien hand. More beautiful — because more expressive of the genuine taste of its possessors — is the laboriously-wrought antimacassar of beads and plush, or the chromo representing the fruits of California, than the Lippo Lippi madonna or the chaste Japanese vase which the Uplifter would fain substitute for them. Preciosity is bad enough in drawing-rooms, it is intolerable in tenements. When we try to force upon uneducated tastes an appreciation of, let us say, Burne-Jones or Bernard Shaw, we are prying open a bud, destroying the embryonic flower inside, and tying a tissue-paper rose on the stem. Instead of trying to teach the less privileged classes (horrible phrase!) to pretend to like what they don’t like, let us try to learn from them to have the courage of our own tastes, — be they good or bad. Paper wings cannot turn a caterpillar into a butterfly.